remember how this was the wrong date for ignorant hysteria anyway? http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/10/26/1517242/2012-a-Miscalculation-Actual-Calendar-Ends-2220?from=rss please, let's get our irrational doomsday theories correct.

'Legally due' makes it sound like Amazon is being taxed. That is not what this is about. This is about collecting taxes from the residents of a state when they purchase something, and forwarding that to the state. The residents (of some states anyway) are supposed to pay this even if Amazon doesn't collect it, but many don't.

Actually, if you leave that field blank on my state's taxes, your odds of an audit go up by nearly an order of magnitude. More so if you are over 55 and have multiple credit cards. (as they know you likely use mail order, and likely there's money to collect).

Proving these violations is REALLY EASY for a state. They simply need your bank statements and credit card statements, and they look for checks and credit purchaseds from out-of-state companies they already know don;t colelct tax, and then bill you the tax, times three, plus interest and penalties (usually ending up somewhere around 7 times the taxes you should have paid). This process takes about 30-60 minutes for the agent, and you get screwed. I know SEVERAL families who have gone through this recently, having made numerous large purchases online.

The state is not only concerned about purchases made without paying tax, they're also looking for in-state companies you may have paid that to, so they can go after them as well... This is easy money for the state, and an easy argument to get past thhe public (the 90% who bought locally and paid taxes don;t like you assholes who not only fail to, but send your money out of state instead of buying locally and supporting the economy). It's a win-win for the politicians, and a huge negative credit mark and a big bill for you.

Most people understand this... you need to learn it. You can choose the easy way or the hard way. (if you;ve been cheating a while, I'll vote for the hard way for you).

How about calculus, algebra and discrete mathematics?
Software developers don't need any of that, right?

Hear, hear. Since I've replaced metacity with a simple tiling manager (xmonad) and stuck to one application per workspace, I have one thing less on my mind: arranging the freaking windows in the first place. This has the added benefit of maximizing screen real-estate for each application and every running app is two keystrokes away (Alt + workspace number). It takes some time to get adapt but it's worth it. The manager is a little rough around the edges (for example doesn't work well with GIMP) since it's still experimental but I still feel more productive.

What really bothers me with the GNOME Shell is that the project doesn't have a goal beyond: eye-candy, flat searchable menus and switching "paradigms".

So it's finally happened. After months of "I hate where KDE is going with KDE 4, I'm switching to GNOME!", now it's GNOME that's making unpopular changes and people are saying "I hate where GNOME is going with GNOME 3, I'm switching to KDE!".

Why should they care about people using KDE? They should care about people using Gnome 2. I for once really don't know how KDE 3 looks like. Maybe a little like Windows but I'm not sure the screenshots I show where really KDE 3 (or 4 or something else). I'll search youtube.

Perhaps you're unaware that YouTube carries complete episodes of some shows and even a few movies. Most of them are not available outside the USA (and their UI sucks; you select a different country and it still shows you loads of things that only work in the USA and only tells you that they won't work when you hit play).

The whole idea that you need cable seems to be a US thing. On this side of the pond most people don't have cable (or satellite, which is more common), and we have fewer terrestrial channels. I did have cable for a bit because it was about £5 on top of my Internet subscription. I cancelled it after a while because I realised that I found the adverts too irritating on the cable channels and was mainly watching things on the BBC and it wasn't worth paying for the occasional show on Sky One. My TV broke about a year later, and I'd watched so little on it in the preceding few months that I didn't bother getting it repaired.

Now that I don't have a TV, I actually watch more than I did before. I rent DVDs through the post and the same company offers a streaming service. I have an old laptop connected to a projector which can play the streaming shows (a relatively limited selection of films and TV shows, but no limits on the number you can watch), shows on iPlayer, and so on. I never see adverts and I watch things when I want to watch them, without having to remember to record them in advance.

That's not what he's saying at all. Do you think the police could actually stop murders if everyone decided to go on a murdering spree? Of course they couldn't, and that is not their job. Laws are codified versions of the ethical values of the society that enacts them. They can only function because most of the population will abide by them irrespective of whether they exist or not. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't bother with them, it means that the purpose of the police is to apprehend those who lack the required social instinct and indoctrination to participate in a complex society. If these people are ever more than a small fraction of society, the police will fail. The only way that you can ensure this is by controlling the education system. Unfortunately, with sociopaths in government the education system in much of the world is indoctrinating people to believe that they can do better exploiting society than participating it (which is true, if only a few people do it).

British sovereignty wasn't fully repealed until October 19, 1781. Likewise, if I violate a paracopyright or extended copyright today, it's still illegal even if the Congress repeals the Bono Act and DMCA tomorrow.

My company is more careful about not violating OSS licenses than making sure they don't pirate any shareware

You know what I think would happen if they did that?
They'd sell the left-over bandwidth.
It's already been done with phone and cable.
Even train companies sell bandwidth nowadays.
We live in a time where everyone with a piece of string or spectrum does networking services.